Posts Tagged ‘taurus sho’

Maybe it’s a sign of age, but when I was first burning rubber down the Jersey Shore, the guys with the really hot-looking cars were as likely as not poseurs. The folks you didn’t want to race – not if you wanted to hang on to your cash – were the ones with the “beaters,” often dented, occasionally rusted out, but always looking like they couldn’t get out of their own way until you lined up at the stoplight.

That’s much the idea Ford Motor Co. had in mind when it introduced the first Taurus SHO, back in 1989. No, you couldn’t order the dents, but you could get what seemed like a plain Jane family sedan that packed an awesome Yamaha 220-horsepower six-banger under the hood. Add a track-ready suspension and you were sitting behind the wheel of a SHO, a fearsome beast that could take down most of the muscle cars of the era.

Sadly, Ford seemed to lose interest in this wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing concept. The last run was just plain boring and few even noticed when the SHO slinked off the streets, back in 1999. But, with the launch of an all-new Taurus aimed at recreating the excitement of the original sedan, it seemed just so, well, absolutely right to bring back the SHO, as well.

Think of the 2010 Ford Taurus as the “ultimate sleeper performance sedan,” suggests product program chief Frank Davis, with a fair bit of hyperbole, but it’s nonetheless a boast the new car can live up to.

Sho-off: with the addition of an Ecoboost V-6, expect the 2010 Ford Taurus SHO to be one of the fastest offerings in its segment.

Ford Motor Company is betting big on its new Ecoboost engine, planning to offer variants of the high-mileage engine in 90% of its global vehicle lines, company officials reveal.

The first version of Ecoboost, a twin-turbocharged V-6, will make its debut, later this year, on four high-profile products: the Ford Flex, the new high-performance Taurus SHO, and the Lincoln MKS sedan and MKT crossover. The following year, Ford will add the 3.5-liter V-6 as an option on its big F-Series pickups. And confirming long-standing expectations, Ford officials confirm that a 4-cylinder version of the high-mileage engine will appear in the relatively near future.

While Ford is expanding its line-up of hybrid-electric vehicles, and developing new plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles, or HEVs, and battery-electric vehicles, “Ecoboost is the foundation of our gasoline technology” going forward, explains Barb Samardzich, Ford’s Vice President of Powertrain Development.

For the 2010 Calendar-Year, Samardzich noted, Ecoboost will be offered in 23% of Ford’s many models. By 2013, that will jump to 90%. Buyers will typically have other options – in products like Flex and the MKS, the Ecoboost will be the high-line option, and carry a still-unspecified price premium. But going forward, the I-4 version could become the mainstay in high-mileage Ford products. As a result, the automaker expects to sell 1.3 million vehicles equipped with the technology, in 2013, nearly half of those in the U.S.

Who says performance is dead? Despite the “greening” of the automobile, there are plenty of folks who like a little muscle. The reborn, 2010 Ford Taurus SHO says you can have them both. Equipped with a twin-turbo version of the automaker’s new Ecoboost V-6, the new SHO promises to deliver high performance, and high mileage, as well.

Sadly, it’s been a decade since Ford abandoned the SHO, after selling more than 100,000 of them between 1989 and 1999. The original version was powered by a little Yamaha engine that owed a lot to that maker’s experience with high-revving motorcycle engines. The second-generation SHO, like the base Taurus, was a misguided effort, featuring a chunky V-8 that lost a lot of the original’s quirky appeal. And as Ford shifted gears, steering the Taurus away from retail buyers, into the fleet market, it abandoned the SHO version entirely.